On March 5th of the year 2022, the Sesshō-seki cracked open, releasing the ancient kitsune Tamamo-no-Mae for the first time since 1653. At first, she was triumphant, her incorporeal spirit borne far from her ancient prison by a summoned wind. She had been away long, and the time had come for the kitsune to once more survey her domain.
And yet what Tamamo saw confused and frightened her. Long had she traveled the Earth, but matters had changed over the last four centuries faster than she could have ever anticipated. Japan was strange, now; full of ethereal flashing lights, ghastly towers of metal and stone, and a horrid cacophony of sound. The people were familiar, yet all wrong. They considered the old way naught but an amusing tradition now, garbing themselves in the clothes of foreigners and speaking their harsh languages. Of the Yokai, none were left to be found, or at the very least none who still deigned to meet with an aged fox spirit from an bygone age. Tamamo was alone.
She had fled the garish frivolity of the cities for the countryside that always comforted her, wounded to find it much reduced from her time. Solitude was what she craved now, and the kitsune found it in an old shrine on the slopes of Mount Nyoho, the most isolated point she could quickly find that was tolerably far away from her Kanto prison.
There were offerings left in the shrine, and though the Yen coins meant very little to Tamamo, the bottles of sake were more than welcome. And yet even the escape of a simple drink was almost denied her, as the kitsune struggled with the damnable new tops these glass bottles now had. Finally learning to unscrew them more out of instinct than intuition, the kitsune began to drown her sorrows as men and women of power do when their fortunes are suddenly brought crashing down. If the spirits the offerings were left for would be offended, let them come—Tamamo welcomed the chance to bring them out of hiding. None came, however, and the kitsune lapsed into a burbling, miserable self pity.
She had been there three days now, spending her days trying to contact old acquaintances and her nights drunk. The kitsune had always been wily, a beautiful seductress known across this land and beyond—yet Tamamo had no family to speak of, none in the past and certainly none now. She had always considered herself above such things. Back in days when she though her power would never wane. She thought of how things could've been different, with a man who had loved her without deceit and kits to dote upon.
And yet, now here Tamamo was. She was sitting on the small lip before the shrine's battered offering box, another large bottle of sake in her hand. The cold March wind easily penetrated the shrine's partial walls, and the kitsune wrapped her nine fluffy tails around herself for warmth. She gazed down at the half full drink in her hand, bringing it up for one long swig before letting it drop with a muffled thud to the dirt floor below. Tamamo grabbed one of her tails, burying her face in its golden fur as she began to cry.
"Hello? Are you alright in there?" said a muffled voice from outside the shrine.
Tamamo's ears perked up as she sat bolt upright in shock. Pure animal instinct told her to flee, her sense as a Yokai to fight, but the sake she had drank muffled both those responses just long enough for a man to come around the corner of the trail and into the shrine.
Tamamo's heart was beating unusually quickly as she regarded the man. Was he a foreigner? She couldn't tell anymore, but he wore the clothing of one—something that meant little in today's Japan, it seemed. Her tail quickly slipped out of her grasp and bristled behind her with the others as she stood up, her mind still not quite clear on what she was going to do.
"Are you alright? I heard you crying. I hope I'm not intruding on you," the man repeated as he slowly walked forward.
Tamamo's tails slowly relaxed behind her. Of course, she was still magically disguised as she had been when she investigated her old haunts in Kyoto and Edo; after all, not even a gaijin would be so stupid as to approach if he could truly see what she was.
"I'm fine," Tamamo said tersely, her hands on her hips as her miko fluttered slightly in the wind.
"You didn't sound fine. Are you the shrine maiden here?" he asked as he stopped in front of her. "Have you been drinking all the offerings here? Bold of you to risk the spirits' wrath like that," he continued as he surveyed the several empty bottles of sake.
"I said I'm fine," Tamamo said again as she attempted to take an aggressive step forward. However, the kitsune had miscalculated the toll the sake had taken upon her physique, and she almost stumbled directly into the intruder.
"Woah, hey, easy there!" he said in surprise as he caught Tamamo and gently eased her back into a sitting position in front of the offering box and sitting down next to her, luckily avoiding squishing any of the kitsune's nine soft tails.
Tamamo stubbornly remained silent, though the man seemed just as willing to remain mute next to her. In truth, a small part of Tamamo wanted to take this opportunity to speak her mind—it would've been the first opportunity to do so in hundreds of years. Yet, even with all the liquid courage she had imbibed shortly before, Tamamo was still far from willing to appear weak.
"What are you doing this far away from civilization? Don't you know it's dangerous, humans going off on their own like this?" Tamamo said as she leaned back against the offering box, using a couple of her tails as cushions.
"Hiking. Don't you know it's beyond dangerous to get drunk on a mountain hiking trail?" the man shot back.
Tamamo remained silent. Even if he didn't know how powerful of a Yokai he was talking to, the man had a point.
"I've been through a lot recently," Tamamo started. "You wouldn't understand."
"You could still tell me about it, and I could try to understand."
"You can't even begin to comprehend what I am."
"I think those ears would've given it away if the nine tails hadn't."
Tamamo's head turned towards him in a flash, her eyes wide open in alarm. It had been beyond stupid of her to assume that her illusions still held after days without maintenance. And yet this human's utter calm at finding her in the shrine had lulled her into a false sense of security.
"You mean," she stuttered, "you could see—" Tamamo stopped nervously, gesturing to her tails.
"Yeah, I could see them," the man confirmed, "but I still wanted to make sure you were alright."
Tamamo suddenly found herself unable to hold his gaze. She looked instead at the dirt floor of the shrine, her tails curling around her reflexively as her cheeks burned red. This was just another humiliation, the latest in a rapid series since her ancient prison had broken apart from no effort of her own. And yet, Tamamo almost welcomed it. She wanted—needed—to confide in someone, have at least one person in this strange new world to talk to. Maybe it was the sake, or perhaps time had mellowed her out; Tamamo didn't know from whence the sudden upwelling of trust came from within her, but in truth she welcomed it.
"Alright. I'm willing to try," Tamamo said softly as two of her tails wrapped themselves around the man's chest, "but I'm going to need to know a bit more about who it is I'm talking to."